ASHINGTON -- Three Cuban diplomats at the United Nations who are suspected
of
spying were ordered Wednesday to leave the country, American officials
said.

The three men
were linked to espionage after an investigation by the FBI that led to
the arrest and
indictment of
10 suspected Cuban agents in Miami three months ago. The three men in New
York
have diplomatic
passports, which give them immunity from prosecution as spies.

The State Department
spokesman, James Rubin, said Wednesday that the three diplomats --
identified by
other U.S. officials as Eduardo Martinez Borbonet, a first secretary; Roberto
Azanza
Paez, a third
secretary, and Gonzalo Fernandez Garay, an attache -- were being expelled
"for
activities incompatible
with their diplomatic status." The phrase is Cold War code for espionage.

The three have
been ordered to leave the United States by Monday evening.

Those arrested
in Miami were charged with trying to infiltrate military bases and Cuban
exile
organizations
in the United States. They face life in prison if convicted.

Hundreds of spies
from Cuba's spy service, the Direccion General de Inteligencia, or DGI,
live and
work in the
United States, according to former members of the service who have defected.
A sizable
fraction of
the Cuban delegation at the United Nations has always been made up of intelligence
officers, according
to U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials.

Many nations
-- including the United States -- have used the United Nations as a base
for
intelligence
work since it was founded more than 50 years ago, according to former officials
of the
CIA. During
the Cold War at least a third of the diplomats at the Soviet Mission to
the United
Nations were
suspected by the FBI of working for Soviet intelligence.

Cuban intelligence
officers do not operate under cover only as diplomats. They have posed
as taxi
drivers, real-estate
brokers and weapons dealers in New Jersey and Florida. They have also posed
as members of
the Cuban immigrant communities in Miami who actively oppose the Cuban
leader,
Fidel Castro.
Many of those groups have been infiltrated for years; the chief of operations
of one of
the most militant
anti-Castro organizations secretly reported to Havana for a decade.

Castro has openly
defended his right to conduct intelligence operations in the United States.
He
justifies them
as a legitimate response to American attempts to overthrow or undermine
him over
nearly four
decades, and to the many groups of Cuban exiles who seek a swift end to
his rule.